I think it is vey important for teachers to actively be thinking when planning a lesson, unit or discussion to be able to trigger that prior knowledge and use that as a base to build onto new topics/ ideas. Almost all of Science is connected in some way or another. Many people use methods of problem solving every day and don't even realize it.

we as teachers need to be able to facilitate that prior knowledge and if they do not have prior knowledge place texts to help them learn what they need to before they can read or look at another text or participate in that discussion.

I think the best way to do this is to show students how Scientists use field research and data to solve problems. Science has a wonderful way of allowing us to problems solve and draw our conclusions in facts. I think it is incredibly important for students to be knowledgeable in diffenating between facts and opinions.

Students are constantly learning ways that best work for them when reading something new or something challenging. I think that it is important that we help them fine tune the strategies that they already know work for them as well as include new ones that may be content specific

I find that a lot of students struggle with this part. Unlike English in the field we do not want long, well flowing, descriptive, sentences. We like the data clear cut and the facts behind it. Papers usually done correctly are less than 4-5 pages even with all the pictures and graphs. (they can be longer but professional publishers like Nature will only take it if its less than 4.)

Really important and not just for in the classroom. A lot of media articles that are based off of a research paper read far too into the data. They may claim something that the research may suggest but not necessary prove. It often leads to people mistrusting Scientists or misinformation being spread. Just because there is a correlation it does not mean it is the cause.

The best thing and probably the worst thing about Science is that we are constantly finding more and more of the answers but as we find those answers it only prompts more questions. The path of Inquiry is not the liner path depicted in text books it is a lot of trail error and educated guesses, before something may be worked out. It can take years to reach any sort of reliable conclusion.

This is very true. My Lab here at ISU is always changing procedures as new research comes out. We need to be up to date on what is going on in other labs to calibrate data. Falsifying evidence is not just wrong morally it is a one way ticket to being thrown out of the community and depending on what you are researching jail time.

I would agree that in Science we have a lot of Vocab/Jargon many of which can be difficult for students to understand. There are some words that really can be substituted for students to understand something better but for some words there really is no substitute and students really need to know it